Irish Literature: ENGL 255-01
Friday, Jan 24th
Page 1
Color Key: Vocabulary | Assignment/ Readings
Verse Play- Kathleen Wilhelm ???
NOTES
The Second Coming
● Gets quoted all the time with a big disaster nationally or internationally
● Gotten to everyone’s guts
● Wrote after the first WW
● Note that he was reading about a sphynx (2nd stanza it is mentioned) in the
desert; spirit of the world
○ Has a vision, image in his mind
● Gyre: spiral or vortex
● “The falcon cannot hear the falconer”- sport; falcon is trained to hunt- ascends
using a spiral (gyre), trained with a whistle (can see this in the new Vanessa
Hudgens Christmas movie on Netflix about the prince who travels in time)
● “Things fall apart”-> then talks about “mere anarchy”
● Blood dimmed tide- warfare
● Rocking cradle- Jesus
● Facing of tumultuous evil
A Prayer for my Daughter
● Great gloom upon his mind- he is worried about his child; when you become a
parent, it’s like extending your heart out into the world
● Praying for her
● Comparison to the ocean- you might feel love and fear
● Murderous innocence (used innocence a lot in his works)
● Traditional romanticized ideas of beauty- wants it but not too much; kindness;
intimacy
○ Helen (of Troy)
○ The great queen who rose out of the spray (Venus)
○ Old rich guy has a fab woman
○ Puzzled by the flesh and it makes him nervous now bc he has a daughter
● Horn of Plenty- cornucopia
